I've been thinking about an alternative door treatment for blast doors: the slow-opening kind like you might find on the death star.

To simulate this in a skirmish game, I'm thinking about drawing two sets of adjacent door limn lines over the double-thick blast doors, one along each side of the center line running through the middle of the door to create a double-layered door effect. Basically, each blast door is two doors in one place. The intended game effect of this is that these doors take longer to open: when a miniature ends its turn adjacent to such a door, only the side adjacent to that miniature opens at the end of its activation. The other side wasn't adjacent at that point because the adjacent side was still a wall at the end of the activation. The other side becomes adjacent after the first layer of door is open, so it then opens at the end of the next activation.

Example Image:

The net result of this is to make a door that can't be opened completely on a single activation (without the use of other door control effects). It prevents a player with two activating miniatures from moving one mini to open the door, and then immediately running through the open doorway with the other.

I'd use it sparingly, but I think there are places it would be appropriate. It would also come into play if you're putting two maps or tiles adjacent to each other, with one door next to another.

Some interesting side-effects:

1) Satchel Charge would only destroy one side of this blast door with a single use, turning it into a normal door. Another use of Satchel Charge would be needed to destroy both sides of the door.

2) Override and Door Gimmick can speed up the opening of the door by opening one side, allowing a moving mini to then open the other side as normal--but it would take extra door control to hold both sides locked in an open position.

3) If your opponent has a blast door held open with an adjacent miniature, and you use override to lock shut the side immediately adjacent to that miniature, the other side will also shut because it would cease to be adjacent to that miniature (and would then take two further activations to re-open it). BUT...if you're on the other side of that doorway from the enemy, and you do this, that automatic closing of the door closer to you would block your line of sight to the side of the door you just targeted with override...

Anyway, that's the idea. I may in the future start drawing double-sided door lines like this on blast doors. If you don't like the idea you could always ignore the double-door treatment and proceed as normal

That said, before I start making this sort of thing common in future maps, I'm curious to see what the community thinks of the notion. Would it add an interesting twist for blast doors, or cause arguments at the game table? Technically it uses the existing rules without any adjustments, but it's something players aren't used to seeing. What do you think? Anyone care to give it a playtest for me?

I think the idea is great. I just wonder about making more visually noticable. At first glance you should be able to tell if it is a blast door or not. I am not sure how to do this. I have some ideas, but it is your baby I will let you do with it wht you please. I know that once people get used to the maps that it would become common place.

I think the idea is great. I just wonder about making more visually noticable. At first glance you should be able to tell if it is a blast door or not. I am not sure how to do this. I have some ideas, but it is your baby I will let you do with it wht you please. I know that once people get used to the maps that it would become common place.

This was my first concern as well. I would think the easiest solution would be to alternate the blue rectangle on each side of the doors. Other than that, I love it.

I'm not really sure the rules support this at the current time. Really should get NickName to chime in on it. The way I interpret the rules, you would check for adjacency to doors at the end of the turn. Technically, since that's a simultaneous action, you would check doors in whatever order you wanted to. In a normal situation where you are adjacent to two totally different doors, like this:

__XXAXXX|

(where X's are open area and the lines are the doors), then you could check the top door first, and then the bottom door. This is important in terms of things like Princess Leia, Senator's CE for movement at the end of the turn as well.

I'm thinking because of the simultaneous actions rule, that the double-doors would simply be checked one at a time, and an adjacent character would be allowed to open them both. Now, obviously, it would have a larger effect on Override and Satchel Charge.

However, at the same time, the current rules don't really support more than one terrain line on a grid line. Can you have more than one feature on a grid line? We've never had that before.

I think it's a great idea overall for a map, but it might be tricky to pull off rules wise, and may require some special rulings, just for that specific map. Might be easier to just make it more like an airlock, with a 1" square between the two doors.

_________________-AaronMand'alor"You either die a hero, or you live to see yourself become the villain."

I agree it needs to be much more different than regular doors. Maybe choose another color than blue to differentiate between this and a normal door. I was thinking purple? Or instead of having rectangles make them triangles?

@ Lobosteele: When I made my first post I had considered this and then tossed it aside. I had forgot about the old Gree CE trick, which basically means doors are checked individually and not as a single overarching step.

Heck, even if it did work the way Chris was thinking, at the end of the next character's turn both doors would be open anyway, so not as great as my inital reaction.

As far as senario/RPG play, you can declare anything you want, so having a feature on the map that actually looks different really doesn't help. If you're only going to have it for scenario/RPG play, then IMO, it's kind of pointless, and would only serve to confuse the competitive players.

Good point, TCW. With a door like this, you would just move your first piece adjacent to the door, then move your 2nd piece, even in that scenario, it would then be open at the end of your turn.

Again, I think with the rules as currently written, the only way to do this is with a 1" space between the doors. Granted, this allows for somebody to get trapped between them, which is a bit of an abstraction.

_________________-AaronMand'alor"You either die a hero, or you live to see yourself become the villain."

For clarity, there would be no impact through this design using the standard rules. "Both" doors would be considered the same door and behave as any normal door. (I don't think Chris's original idea was that he'd found a loophole in the rules he could take advatage of in an interesting way, but some responses seem to be going in that direction, so just confirming it's not the case.)

For casual play, it's a neat idea and as long as the door terrain is an obvious variation of the standard door terrain line for tourney play I don't see any problem with adding this along with the special rules in the first post for how to play Blast Doors. Kinda like the Windows we have now for optional use.

FWIW, I also liked Chris's previous idea for a terrain varient that created cover but did not slow movement. (Maybe a slightly dashed green line so it would behave as Low Objects in tourney play.)

I agree it needs to be much more different than regular doors. Maybe choose another color than blue to differentiate between this and a normal door. I was thinking purple? Or instead of having rectangles make them triangles?

I was thinking the same color. Triangles pointing in different directions.

But Nickname already nixed the overall idea asfar as tournament play anyway. But aren't we rewriting the floor rules? Hmmmm....

There is a very big difference between new rules that are spelled out on the card and what has to be "learned", like the floor rules. Especially now. The more changes you make to the game that isn't in the rulebook, the greater chance you have of alienating potential new players, or returning players. SWCCG, a game that needed rules streamlining more than any other game, made a new rulebook. It caused a lot of drama, due to some relatively minor changes made to the rules so that it would be "easier". I think they did a good job, but it was not well recieved because of a few interactions that no longer worked. Now, something like this isn't as bad, and really with maps, isn't likely to be a factor at all. But you should never discount that "change is bad" mentality when you are thinking of creating new rules (which would be terrain, un-named Force powers, banned/restricted lists).

I did like the idea of terrain that grants Cover, but doesn't affect movement. Such a logical type, I'm surprised WOTC didn't think about it. Instead we got "Trenchs", Windows, and whatever they called the Forests in Attack on Endor.

(The generic "why not?" argument for new rules in tourney play is an old one. The opposition viewpoint was covered in depth in the "Updating the floor rules" thread very recently so rather than rehashing it here, I encourage anyone interested to read it there.)

I'm all for more optional terrain effects with subtle iconography as long as it won't distract from the more stringent requirements that would allow it to play under the standard rules too.

I think Lobo was meaning because the blue rectangles are wider than your normal yellow, green, orange, or red lines, that putting two side by side would take up more room, and wasnt sure how it would work out.

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